The reviews have been unanimous. Betsy DeVos flunked her confirmation hearing, making it even more clear that she’s completely unqualified to run the Department of Education.

More than 1.4 million CREDO activists have joined you in signing our petition urging the Senate to reject DeVos, an extreme right-wing bigot who has no relevant experience as an educator and did not attend or send her children to public school. The pushback from CREDO members has been amazing and has played a role in slowing down her confirmation process. But, our resistance is not done.

We have to do everything we can to keep the U.S. Department of Education out of her unqualified hands. Can you add your name today to keep the pressure on?

DeVos is a right-wing voucher and charter school activist whose numerous projects include the disastrous effort to spread charters in Detroit, which failed to increase student achievement while allowing charters to operate with little accountability or oversight.1 She also has an appalling record on civil rights, which indicates she will be a threat to LGBTQ children, especially transgender students, who face prejudice, harassment and bullying in schools and suffer from higher rates of depression and suicide than non-LGBTQ classmates.

Her confirmation hearing was an unmitigated disaster that showed even more clearly how unqualified she is to run the Department of Education. Any senator who votes to confirm her will be supporting someone who:

Refused to commit to holding charter schools or private schools accepting federal vouchers as accountable as public schools;2

Refused to say she wouldn’t privatize public schools or cut funds from public education;3

Failed to show basic understanding on a range of key issues, including how to assess student performance, how the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act works to protect the rights of students and how the Department of Education has worked to address campus sexual assault;4

Has no qualifications to manage the Department of Education’s trillion dollar student loan bank;5

Told Sen. Chris Murphy, who represented Newtown, Connecticut when he was in the House of Representatives, that cities and states should be able to decide whether to allow guns in schools.6

Equal access to high-quality education is one of the cornerstone promises of our democracy. We have a long way to go and much work to do before it’s a promise that is reliably and consistently fulfilled for children of color, children whose first language is not English and children living in poverty. Putting Betsy DeVos at the helm of the Department of Education puts the promise itself at risk.

Democrats must do everything they can to defend the Department of Education, starting with standing united against DeVos.